See you, space cowboy: Netflix cancels live-action Cowboy Bebop after one season
Easy come, easy go.
Netflix will not be moving forward with a second season of Cowboy Bebop, EW has confirmed, marking the end of the line for the streamer's live-action adaptation of the classic anime series. The news comes less than a month after the series debuted, to much fanfare but somewhat negative responses.
"The new Cowboy Bebop will probably excite anyone who's never seen the original anime, and those who have might be tickled by all the homages and recreations," EW's Christian Holub wrote in his review. "But in each case, it'd be more fulfilling to move Netflix's cursor one spot over and check out the original series."
Nicola Dove/Netflix Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine, John Cho as Spike Spiegel, Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black on 'Cowboy Bebop'
Like the Japanese anime, Cowboy Bebop followed a group of spacefaring bounty hunters on misadventures around the galaxy in the year 2071. John Cho starred as ex-gangster Spike Spiegel, with Mustafa Shakir as his partner and former cop Jet Black and Daniella Pineda as amnesiac bounty hunter Faye Valentine.
While the original series ran for 26 episodes and was closed-ended by design, the live-action Bebop left the door open for future entries, with fan-favorite character Radical Ed arriving in the last scene of the finale to offer Spike a bounty. (Showrunner André Nemec told EW that "all about Ed [would] be revealed" in a potential second season.)
According to Netflix's new viewership data site, Cowboy Bebop was among the top 10 TV shows on the service the week after its debut, but posted a steep drop-off in viewership the following week.
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